City pay higher than in other same-sized towns

Bolstered in part by a wage adjustment done in 2007, a full-time city employee cost Maricopa $62,959 in 2008 on average in wages alone, an increase of nearly 140 percent since 2004.

While the increase may seem dramatic, the city is coming from a low starting point. When Maricopa incorporated almost five years ago, there were a total of 11 employees, no paid fire department and no police department.

However, a review of salary data from private sector jobs and other Arizona municipalities close in size to Maricopa shows the city’s average pay is about the same or higher for most similar positions.

WAGE ADJUSTMENT

Maricopa became a city in 2004, and at that time the average employee salary was $25,386. The pay and number of employees have grown explosively since then. In 2005 the number of employees jumped to 28 while the average wage increased 18 percent, in 2006 the number of employees climbed to 56 and the average wage rose 14 percent.

“When the city first started, we would just look at similar positions and take a flat average,” said Karen Shaffer, city support services director. “It wasn’t a very accurate reflection of what wages should be.”

In 2007, Maricopa hired an outside consulting firm that compared city job descriptions with those in other municipalities and governmental entities to determine the average salary baseline for each title. Those entities included Queen Creek, Coolidge, Apache Junction, Buckeye, Casa Grande, Avondale, Goodyear, Gilbert, Surprise, Chandler, Tempe, Mesa, Phoenix and Scottsdale, Pinal County and the state of Arizona.

“We were just behind in what we should be paying our employees,” said City Manager Kevin Evans.

When city officials received the pay scale from the firm, the City Council voted to put employees at the recommended midpoint for their positions. The resulting adjustments increased the city payroll by 80 percent.

However, even if an employee was determined to be making above the recommended wage, their pay was not brought down.

“Rick Buss (the city manager when the survey was launched) said that when he had this study performed that no employee’s wages would be cut,” Shaffer said.

She also said a worker’s experience was not taken into account for the salary adjustment. “To my knowledge, they did not look at our résumés when determining who gets what,” she said.

Since the 2007 wage adjustment, many of the cities in the survey have reduced staff salary and cut positions.

“It may be time to look at salaries again,” Evans said.

While the wage adjustments seemed to reflect a fair assessment of market value when compared to those 17 cities, many of them are much larger in size than Maricopa.

According to a salary report from the League of Arizona Cities and Towns, the pay for many Maricopa positions are $4,000 to $15,000 above market value when compared to cities with populations from 10,000 to 50,000.

Position	Building Inspector	Admin. Assistant	City Manager	Human Resources Director	Avg. of all full-time positions
Maricopa avg.*	$55,540	$40,730	$156,950	$99,611	$62,959
Avg. of 27 Ariz. cities pop. 10,000-50,000**	$44,860	$36,424	$138,360	$91,356	N/A
Private sector ***	$50,440	$40,700	N/A	$80,052	$41,223

“We are doing our best to stay competitive in pay so we can retain our current employees and in the future attract the most qualified candidates,” Evans said.

Evans said when he was hired as city manager more than a year ago, he eliminated several high-paid employees and cut other approved positions from the budget.

Currently, Maricopa has a total of 211 employees, which is 38 below the average for 27 Arizona cities of similar size. However, many of those cities also provide services that Maricopa does not, such as water and trash pickup.

Evans said that when the wage adjustments were done almost two years ago, many people were handed promotions and saw their amount of responsibilities triple.

“I am in favor of making the people you have do more work instead of creating new positions,” Evans said.

One example of this is Marty McDonald, director of community services. In many cities, McDonald would oversee just the parks and recreation department, but in Maricopa he also has libraries on his plate.

PUBLIC SAFETY

One group of employees tends to inflate Maricopa’s salary numbers.

“Fire and police are high-risk, high-paying jobs that bring a city’s average salary up,” said Assistant City Manager Roger Kolman.

Public safety employees represent 114 of the 211 people employed by the city. If those 114 are removed from the average salary equation, then the typical city paycheck drops to $58,263 a year.

At the time of the wage survey in 2007, Maricopa had already incorporated the fire department but didn’t have a police department yet, so the company only looked at the wages of fire and leadership positions in public safety.

Position	Police officer	Police sergeant	Police captain	Firefighter	Fire captain
Maricopa avg.*	$59,402	$73,180	$89,252	$54,682	$76,530
Avg. of 27 Ariz. cities pop. 10,000-50,000**	$49,812	$66,972	$83,340	$41,952	$62,628
Market midpoint from city’s survey	$59,640	$78,625	N/A	N/A	N/A

However, Maricopa recently completed another wage survey specific to the police department, which determined that the city’s rate for their police employees was below that of the same 17 entities they compared to back in 2007.

According to the recent survey, Maricopa’s midpoint on police salaries is $4,251 below the average, and sergeant’s pay is $7,782 below average.

Shaffer said the midpoints are not what employees are actually making, but the midpoint on the listed salary scale in all of the entities.

However, just like with other city positions, when the wages of public safety officials are compared to those in only similar-sized municipalities instead of large cities like Phoenix and Mesa, Maricopa’s numbers come out high. A review of public records shows on average a Maricopa police officer makes $59,402 a year, 19 percent more than $49,812 made by officers in the 27 cities listed in the League of Arizona Cities and Towns salary report.

“This survey was a direct comparison, but we are not sure what we are going to do with these numbers,” Evans said.

* 2008 figures from City of Maricopa public records
** 2008 figures from League of Arizona Cities and Towns salary report
*** 2007 nationwide figures from the U.S. Bureau of Labor